future city builders

Meet the ambitious University of Toronto students and recent grads poised to become big players in shaping the city’s identity and contributing to its growth.

This ongoing series from Romi Levine, who covers the city beat for U of T News, shares their stories.

After an earthquake in 2011 ravaged Japan, the small city of Ishinomaki was in ruins. Over 3,000 people were dead, and more than 50,000 buildings were either damaged or destroyed.

Out of the rubble came a small furniture workshop called Ishinomaki Laboratory, founded by Tokyo-based architect Keiji Ashizawa. The lab's focus was to teach residents how to fix their houses and build their own furniture, helping to restore normality and rebuild the city.

University of Toronto alumnus David Wang learned about Ishinomaki Laboratory in 2015 during his final year of university when he was studying abroad in Tokyo.

“It's an authentic story of how a community used basic tools to slowly pick themselves up,” says Wang, who majored in Asia-Pacific studies and East Asian studies at U of T's Munk School of Global Affairs.

Wang began his forays into Asia as an undergrad with brief trips abroad. He participated in a Woodsworth Summer Abroad course taught in Shanghai, and in his third year, he went on one of the Faculty of Arts & Science's international course module (ICM) trips, travelling to China’s Yanbian Autonomous Prefecture. (See a blog about the trip.) He also travelled to Taiwan to film a documentary with fellow student and filmmaker Betty Xie (also supported by the Faculty of Arts & Science) and in 2014 he spent a year abroad at Waseda University.

He was supported by the Dr. David Chu Scholarship and the Northrop Frye Centre Undergraduate Award. The latter award subsidized research trips to the devastated Tohoku region, where Wang learned about community-based, grassroots initiatives started after the 2011 disaster for local and regional revitalization

After interning with Ishinomaki in the summer of 2015, he was hired hired full time a year later.

The company has since evolved to become a profitable furniture company that sells mostly minimalistic wooden items. As a project manager, Wang plays a big part in helping Ishinomaki expand internationally.

“The overseas expansion was a good fit for my skills. It was something I felt like I could immediately contribute to,” he says.

The company only has five full-time staff so Wang has had to become a jack-of-all-trades. Not only is Wang taking on international distribution, he’s also Ishinomaki’s marketer and translator. He’s even become adept in the workshop – learning how to build, drill, sand and pack furniture.

Wang says he has a new appreciation for hands-on work.

“Right now, at least in North America, what's really popular is tech-literacy like coding,” he says. “Woodworking, working with your hands – I see it as old-school programming using these tools. You’re making stuff through a series of logical processes, and you're shooting for a finished product to solve something. It’s design thinking.”

Ishinomaki Laboratory is still loyal to its do-it-yourself roots – it continues to hold workshops in the city and all over Asia.

This past weekend, Wang was in Singapore running a stool-building workshop for the city’s Design Week. At the end of the month, the lab is heading to the Philippines to teach residents of a gentrifying Manila neighbourhood how to build furniture.

“We're working with these people to see if what we learned in Ishinomaki and the spirit of DIY can be transmitted as a cultural exchange,” Wang says. “It’s a worldwide movement.”

Wang says he wouldn’t have pursued job opportunities in Japan were it not for his time studying abroad.

“It's good to have these kinds of experiences when you're young because you still have a malleable mindset, and it really can expand your mind to what’s possible,” he says. “It was a desire to actualize the knowledge I gained in the classroom – put some meat around it.”

The chance to learn drew Wang to Japan, but Ishinomaki Laboratory is what convinced him to stick around.

“I'm a bit of an idealist at heart,” he says. “I don't really think I'm selling furniture, I'm selling the story. I'm presenting the story to consumers.”

Toronto’s future city builders: meet U of T's Erin Kang

Romi Levine — Mon, 05 Dec 2016 18:51:48 +0000

Toronto’s future city builders: meet U of T's Erin Kang

Romi Levine Mon, 12/05/2016 - 13:51

Cutline

Erin Kang helps Torontonians tell their stories at Stories of Ours events (photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

They're the new generation of Toronto city builders.

Meet the ambitious University of Toronto students and recent grads poised to become big players in shaping the city’s identity and contributing to its growth.

This is part of an ongoing series from U of T News writer Romi Levine.

For Erin Kang, city building is about empowerment.

And the University of Toronto urban studies alumna practises what she preaches.

Through Stories of Ours, her storytelling project, Torontonians from all walks of life are encouraged to share their lived experiences at regular live events.

“We’re using stories and art to challenge dominant narratives, challenge what status quo stories are, challenge single-narrative stories and work with people to empower them to use their voice to either heal, heal others or advocate – everyone has their own reason,” says Kang.

Her motivation to create a community of storytellers came in part from the desire to introduce her mom to a larger community of people who have faced similar challenges.

“My mom's circle is so Korean, and she doesn't really interact with others outside of the Korean population. That made me so sad because I learnt so much from others, and in Korean culture, you don't share a lot,” she says.

“She was proud to see me do this, and she was touched that she was such a big inspiration for it. I think she really has begun to open her mind since then.”

Because of her work with Stories of Ours, Kang has been nominated for Samara Canada’s Everyday Political Citizen Award. She also spent this past summer at the University of Cambridge as an Ariane de Rothschild fellow, developing a business plan for the project.

Kang has also developed storytelling workshops for health centres and women’s shelters and hosts a Stories of Ours podcast.

“I've worked with at least 100 different people at this point who are all incredible and most of them thought they had nothing to say, that no one wanted to listen.”

Kang strongly believes that empowerment can also come from community engagement.

“It really isn't that difficult to make an impact in your community,” she says.

“That realization in people that they can actually make a difference is really satisfying for me,” she says.

Kang helps make those connections, managing a social network for community groups called Shape My City.

“We're trying to understand how to leverage our position as a network to be the bridge between what's being done on the ground and the formal city institutions and create that dialogue,” she says.

It's the grassroots mobilization that Torontonians are getting really good at, says Kang.

“Because we have such a diverse population, there's real potential for us to be very strong allies across everything – across movements, sectors. I think we're getting there,” she says.

"When you see, for instance, the overlaps between movements like Black Lives Matter, Idle No More, Pride – the conversations they’re stimulating are challenging and divisive, but wherever there's potential for division, there's potential for togetherness."

Future city builders: Shelley Long

Romi Levine — Thu, 24 Nov 2016 21:13:28 +0000

Future city builders: Shelley Long

Romi Levine Thu, 11/24/2016 - 16:13

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U of T alumna Shelley Long is a landscape designer at Hapa Collaborative in Vancouver (photos courtesy of Shelley Long)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

future city builders

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

Landscape & Design

Toronto

Cities

They're the new generation of Toronto city builders. Meet the ambitious University of Toronto students and recent grads poised to become big players in shaping urban identity and city development.

U of T News writer Romi Levine continues the Future City Builders stories with a profile of U of T alumna Shelley Long, a landscape designer in Vancouver.

Whether it’s the hint of greenery between skyscrapers or a leafy inner-city courtyard – there’s an art to finding the balance between the built and natural environments in a city.

It’s this interaction that drew Shelley Long to landscape architecture.

“With landscape projects, the day you finish building your project, it starts to grow and change. Whereas, with buildings, the day you finish your project, they start to deteriorate in a sense,” says Long, who received her master's in landscape architecture from the University of Toronto’s John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape, and Design.

For her thesis, Long explored these notions of native versus invasive landscapes by re-imagining the Trans-Canada Highway between Calgary and Banff as Canada’s next national park.

“Along the way you experience a spectrum of different human ecologies from the city to an industrial cement mine to agricultural fields to First Nations reserves, which are very Canadian landscapes – and finally, the national park itself,” she says.

Long currently works for Hapa Collaborative, a landscape architecture and design firm in Vancouver.

At Hapa, she’s been able to work on a range of different projects – from residential developments to revitalizing areas of the Simon Fraser University campus.

But it’s the art installation projects that she talks about most enthusiastically.

This year, she was part of a team who designed and created a giant megaphone in a west-end Vancouver plaza. The sculpture, called “Speaker’s Corner,” (pictured below) pays tribute to Jim Deva, an active community member and LGBTQ advocate.

“That was a whirlwind process, but it was really exciting to start a project and see it built in a span of 2 1/2 months,” says Long.

“People put boom boxes behind it. Musicians perform inside it,” she says. “It’s been a really successful centrepiece of that part of the west-end.”

Having lived both in Toronto and Vancouver, Long has observed the cities’ different approaches to city building.

“Vancouver is very outward-focused city in that we are blessed with this abundance of scenery and natural life,” she says. “Our architecture and our built environment definitely reflect that. Our sea wall is the most important public space in the city.”

“Toronto is a much more inward-focused city in that it really loves itself,” says Long. “I don’t say that in a bad way. I say that in a way that it really celebrates its identity. It’s much more culturally focused. It’s much more multicultural. That really comes across in the built landscape.”

Long says Vancouver can learn from Toronto’s rethinking of the waterfront and ravines with an emphasis on landscape architecture.

“We’re saying how can we reintegrate these waterfront spaces and give them back to the public in really interesting ways and develop them into new communities. Likewise, how can we naturalize our streams to make more resilient storm water systems.”

She hopes to see similarly bold perspectives on city building in Vancouver.

“It’s starting to happen, but it’s a long process.”

Future city builders: Karimah Gheddai and Shaimaa Atef

Romi Levine — Mon, 26 Sep 2016 17:09:03 +0000

Future city builders: Karimah Gheddai and Shaimaa Atef

Romi Levine Mon, 09/26/2016 - 13:09

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Karimah Gheddai and Shaimaa Atef (Photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

City & Culture

John H. Daniels Faculty of Architecture

They're the new generation of Toronto city builders.

Meet the ambitious University of Toronto students and recent grads poised to become big players in shaping the city’s identity and contributing to its growth.

This ongoing series from Romi Levine, who covers the city beat for U of T News, shares their stories.

Toronto’s best qualities are the ones long-time residents often take for granted.

But for those who’ve moved to the city from elsewhere, those same qualities were imperative to making Toronto feel like home.

Just ask U of T Masters of urban design grads Karimah Gheddai and Shaimaa Atef.

“I live in one of the best cities in the world,” says Gheddai. “Every day I’m marvelled at how people can get along here. You wouldn’t see this anywhere else.”

“There are so many festivals like the Greek and Polish festivals… You really get to live that home-feeling even if it’s just for a little while,” Atef says.

Gheddai grew up in Nigeria, moving to Calgary when she was 12. After living in a number of cities in Canada, she moved to Toronto.

Atef was born and raised in Egypt, moving here to study at U of T.

Their connections to Africa and desire to improve the lives of people in their home continent were the inspiration for their final urban design thesis project, which ended up winning the Heather M. Reisman Gold Medal in Design in 2015 – the most prestigious award for graduating students of Daniels Faculty of Architecture, Landscape and Design’s urban design program.

For the project, Gheddai and Atef looked at ways to transform informal settlements in African cities to better the lives of those who live in them.

These settlements are usually built without proper planning and often illegally, usually accommodating an influx of people, often migrants or populations coming from rural areas.

Gheddai and Atef focused on some of the oldest settlements in Africa, located in Cairo, Egypt and some of the newest in Dar es Salaam, Tanzania.

“Seventy per cent of [Dar es Salaam] is informal settlements, which is huge and only growing,” says Gheddai, who has worked in the Tanzanian city for the Canadian government.

(below: a rendering of the proposed settlement in Dar es Salaam, by Karimah Gheddai)

The graduate students created a new design for informal settlements that would foster healthy growth – “a prototype for African cities,” that could be used all over the world, says Gheddai.

Informal settlements continue to grow without proper planning, regulation and safety precautions.

“I always had the feeling that there has to be a way to help them. There has to be a way to reconnect the broken link between the government and those dwellers,” says Atef.

There are a number of ways Gheddai and Atef propose doing so, such as “upgrading accessibility to infrastructure, accessibility into the settlement, redeveloping the market network within the settlement and anticipating the growth in between spaces,” says Atef.

(below: a rendering of part of the proposed settlement in Cairo, by Shaimaa Atef)

Gheddai and Atef say many of their ideas were shaped by their experience in Toronto.

“Maybe we didn’t think about it, but we got a lot of inspiration the way the city of Toronto works. From urban agriculture to the entrepreneurship hubs, you have to take the best from everywhere and try and implement it in other places,” says Gheddai.

And the celebration of diversity that made Toronto such a welcoming place for Gheddai and Atef – that could be the city’s greatest export.

“With informal settlements like in Dar es Salaam, people come from the villages, trying to make it in the city – they’re bringing the knowledge and enthusiasm that a lot of people bring to Toronto,” says Gheddai.

Gheddai is currently running her own wedding photography business and a filmmaking workshop for East African women entrepreneurs called Bia-SHE-ara, funded by the Toronto Arts Council.

Atef is working as a junior urban designer at architecture and design firm Perkins + Will.

But Gheddai and Atef have no intention of abandoning their thesis project. They hope to one day put it into practise.

“We are looking to find certain ways to implement that by connecting to UN habitat, by connecting to NGOs back home,” says Atef.

The desire to bring about change in Africa is an ambition they both share.

“I want to move back to Africa and implement strategies, working as an urban designer or in local government,” says Gheddai.

“My end goal is to make my country a better country,” Atef says. “I don’t know how or when, if it’s in my lifetime or the next lifetime, but I would like to make even a small contribution to that.”

Toronto’s future city builders: Cecelia Pye

krisha — Mon, 22 Aug 2016 14:40:28 +0000

Toronto’s future city builders: Cecelia Pye

krisha Mon, 08/22/2016 - 10:40

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(Photo by Romi Levine)

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Subheadline

“With how crazy the world is lately, I’m happy to wake up and not feel fearful in Toronto”

They're the new generation of Toronto city builders.

Meet the ambitious University of Toronto students and recent grads poised to become big players in shaping the city’s identity and contributing to its growth.

This ongoing series from Romi Levine, who covers the city beat for U of T News, shares their stories.

Cecelia Pye is living, as she puts it, the millennial dream.

As a project manager for the Trinity-Bellwoods business improvement area (BIA) and a coordinator for the Bayview-Leaside BIA, she gets to be her own boss, set her own work schedule and spearhead a slew of creative projects.

“My time is very flexible which is what I enjoy about my job,” says Pye, who is a graduate of University of Toronto’s urban studies program.

And as the lone paid employee working with a group of volunteers, that flexibility means she’s had to master all aspects of community building.

“I’ve worked on projects for beautification, marketing for the street, street festivals, one-off events as well as do their budgeting and help them with master plans,” she says.

Toronto is made up of more than 80 business improvement areas – organizations that help build the reputation of specific neighbourhoods in the city, funded by the public and private sectors. And according to the municipal government, it was Toronto that launched the world’s first BIA 46 years ago.

For BIAs, the big emphasis is on community outreach, which means Pye rarely has to sit in an office – opting instead for any one of the independent coffee shops scattered across the Trinity Bellwoods neighbourhood. We met in one of them – Ella’s Uncle. The tiny café is one of many small businesses she works closely with.

“It’s exciting to work with people who are always creative thinkers and who want to support and create unique events in their neighbourhood,” she says.

The Bellwoods BIA runs along Dundas Street between Grace and Bathurst Streets. Most of the stores there are independently-owned – which really adds to the neighbourhood’s local feel, says Pye.

“It’s so eclectic and unique…[The term] ‘buying local’ is overused these days but it is good for the environment and it’s good for local business and you’re supporting the local economy. I think that is really important,” she says.

But working for a BIA isn’t without its challenges. With marijuana dispensaries popping up all over the city – and particularly within Pye’s jurisdiction – she has to facilitate discussion and debate between tenants and sort through any controversy. She says a large part of running a successful BIA is keeping those lines of communication open.

“There’s a strong support system. So if there’s something in the community that people are uncomfortable with or they’re not sure what to do, there’s a way to communicate that,” says Pye.

But one of the biggest issues faced by small businesses in the Bellwoods and Bayview BIAs, and all over the GTA, is the lack of regulation and protection for commercial tenants, she says.

“When a lease ends for a small business after they’ve been in the neighbourhood for three years – people know them, they’re comfortable with them, they visit often, they’ve created a fan base for their business – once that three-year lease is up, the landlord can triple the rent if they want. That’s so frustrating,” says Pye.

“I have seen places just stay closed for a long time because they’re waiting for a corporation to fill the place – which is fine – we’re happy to see any space filled, it’s just when it’s empty for so long it’s kind of sad and I don’t think it adds to the neighbourhood or community.”

Despite the city’s shortcomings, Pye says Toronto has so much to offer that sets it apart from other cities around the world. What tops the list for her? Safety.

“With how crazy the world is lately, I’m happy to wake up and not feel fearful in Toronto,” she says.

Pye says she owes a lot of her passion for city building to the urban studies program and to Shauna Brail, associate professor, teaching stream and director of the program, adding that the internship program and the close-knit group of students were the highlights of her time at U of T.

“I always think back and it’s really inspired continuing work in urban planning,” she says.

Toronto’s future city builders: Jonah Letovsky

lanthierj — Tue, 02 Aug 2016 16:44:16 +0000

Toronto’s future city builders: Jonah Letovsky

lanthierj Tue, 08/02/2016 - 12:44

Romi Levine

Author legacy

Romi Levine

Topic

Subheadline

“It absolutely makes change more palatable when you bring in the local community”

They're the new generation of Toronto city builders.

Meet the ambitious University of Toronto students and recent grads poised to become big players in shaping the city’s identity and contributing to its growth.

This ongoing series from Romi Levine, who covers the city beat for U of T News, shares their stories.

Jonah Letovsky seems to know everyone in Mirvish Village. As we chatted on the steps outside of Markham House – real estate developer Westbank Corp’s community space – he paused every few minutes to say hello to someone new – from colleagues to an indie bookshop owner.

The University of Toronto grad’s affable nature complements his city building philosophy that is anchored in community engagement.

“I think change absolutely should be more integrated,” says Letovsky, “and it absolutely makes change more palatable when you bring in the local community.

“You incorporate those voices for how they’d like to see it done and you hear the ways that people live and work in the neighbourhood.”

As a project coordinator with Westbank, working on initiatives such as the lofty Mirvish Village and Honest Ed’s development, Letovsky’s approach comes in handy.

To say the proposed Mirvish development is ambitious is an understatement. Bought in 2013, the 1.8 hectare site, which includes Honest Ed’s, is set to be transformed into towering residential buildings, retail space and a public market. This means the iconic discount depot is on the chopping block.

The project isn’t without criticism, with community members voicing concerns about the proposed density and the preservation of heritage buildings.

Letovsky says it comes with the territory.

“With Honest Ed’s, people realize that the building itself is a building from the 80s, it’s not a building designed to last forever. But there’s ways you can really interpret the heritage and feeling of Honest Ed’s in the new site,” he says.

What was so special about Honest Ed’s was the role it played in catering to new immigrants, who couldn’t afford to shop at big department stores, says Letovsky.

“In my eyes the idea of a public market and micro retail that offers that diversity of retail opportunities and that leg-up for small entrepreneurs is an amazing way to reinterpret this – it’s a whole lot better than a plaque,” he says.

With regard to complaints about the development plan’s density, “there’s always a trade-off,” Letovsky says.

Multi-storey towers are the only way to fund the retail and community space, he says.

“I don’t really care so much about the heightened density as long as we’re achieving these social goals. Part of that is diverse housing, part of that is a diverse commercial environment, part of that is affordable housing,” says Letovsky.

Despite the criticism, he says, there’s been overwhelming support from the community around Mirvish Village.

Letovsky graduated from U of T in 2015 – majoring in political science with a double minor in urban studies and environmental studies. While in his undergrad, he accrued an impressive list of accomplishments from a stint as a researcher for the United Nations environment programme (UNEP) in Paris to an internship at the Martin Prosperity Institute.

Letovsky says interning at the institute was a great leg-up in the industry.

“That was an incredible opportunity to learn the academic side of what I’m doing now – which is revitalizing urban neighbourhoods, urban economic development… I think that was entirely critical to where I am right now,” he says.

Shauna Brail, associate professor, teaching stream and director of the urban studies program, says there are various ways for future city builders to make a name for themselves and to catch the attention of industry leaders.

“This might mean cultivating an urban-focused social media presence, participating in networking events or volunteering with civic organizations,” says Brail, urban affairs adviser to U of T's president, Meric Gertler. “It helps of course if students have a sense of where their passions lie: social justice or real estate, transit planning or community development.”

In his current position, Letovsky has to juggle many different responsibilities, from property management to marketing and public relations - but the range of duties doesn’t seem to intimidate him.

“I think that’s an expansion of what urban studies is – in particular what the urban studies program is – because it’s not urban planning, it’s not urban economics, it’s not urban politics, it’s all of those things combined,” he says. “It’s really interdisciplinary and that’s why I loved it and I wanted to continue that. So I feel really lucky that I’m in a position where I do all of those things every day.”